Bad Idea releases Mark Waid and David Lapham’s comic in Diamond Previews

The June edition of Diamond Comic Distributors‘The Monthly Previews Catalog arrives in comic book stores and digitally on August 24 and features comics, graphic novels, toys and other pop culture merchandise slated to go on sale from November 2022. But next week’s catalog will include a new Bad Idea comic, The first supper by Marc Waid and David Laphamas an eight-page comic in the catalog itself, starting on page 485.

Could this be Bad Idea Part Two? Publish comics to comic shops, which are not actually distributed to them through Diamond, but actually in the Previews catalog itself? Because there is no list of bad ideas in the catalog itself. And, given the announcement now, could next week’s previews be as collectible as any other Bad Idea comic? Especially since it includes Mark Waid’s first book for the publisher? Or could they, for Bad Idea Part Two, decide to let Diamond distribute them to all stores rather than the chosen few? Or maybe let Diamond run the Destination Store program for Bad Idea?

It kinda smells like Jim Shooter spear Plasm Warriors with #0 tied to Diamond Previews, when it launched Defiant almost thirty years ago. Dinesh Shamdasani, who revived publisher Valiant Entertainment that Shooter founded, may have had the inspiration there and a chance to celebrate its 30th anniversary as well.

Bad Idea is a new comic book publisher from Dinesh Shamdasani, Atom Freeman, Joshua Johns, Karl Bollers, and Antoine Militano. A direct-to-retail publisher, eschewing digital and trade paperbacks in favor of one-cover-per-person comic book sales of big name comics. Last year, Bad Idea announced that it was ceasing its publishing activities. Bad Idea’s official last word was, “Bad Idea is over, as we know it.” We knew it was a lie.

They haven’t announced, solicited, or launched a new comic book series since December of last year. But they created new comics to give away with donuts, or invisible comics, or if you found Matt Kindt and San Diego Comic-Con and tackled him to the ground. But at their Bad Idea First Customer Pin Tiki Party at San Diego Comic-Con, they were showing a lot of art for…something, from Lewis LaRosa, Ramon Villalobos, Alberto Ponticelli, David Lapham and more.

Now they’re coming back in November with what they promise is “a massive two-part slate of comics to rival any that came before.” It appears that they “could have been completed, but were certainly not idle”. They almost promise the type of comic “that you can’t create unless you focus solely on creating them and aren’t distracted by printing, selling, or marketing.” What that means remains to be seen as Bad Idea hasn’t given us any details on upcoming comics yet.

That’s right, there will be seven titles in Part One and they’re offering blind pre-order by September 7th before you know what they are. The first ten people to pre-order all seven titles on each participating destination store wI will have a sticker. That’s right, a sticker. The one up there. And yes, this is the new Bad Idea store listing, we have the inside scoop on that too.

1 – BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE consists of seven titles (15 issues) put on sale between November and February.
2 – Connect with any BAD IDEA Destination store ONLY on Wednesday, September 7 (in person or by any other means accepted by the store).
3 – Pre-order all seven BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE titles from your store. You pre-order blindly. No titles. No story details. No creative teams. Only the cover price and number of issues will be released by September 7. Check with your store for their pre-order requirements.
4 – If you are one of the first 10 people to pre-order all seven titles in your store, you will receive a chic BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE redemption sticker.
5 – The sticker can be used to redeem, with BAD IDEA, an additional, alternate and exclusive story choice for one of the soon to be revealed books in the BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE lineup. WTF is a story choice? Oh boy, just wait.
Miss the BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE PRE-ORDER DAY and you’ll miss the BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE redemption sticker, as well as the additional, alternate, and exclusive story choice it redeems. But, rest assured, you will still be able to pre-order all or part of the BAD IDEA TWO: PART ONE range until the order deadline for each book. Probably, I mean, unless we have to lock in orders after pre-ordering. But that wouldn’t happen, would it?

A sticker that can be swapped to get different endings to the comics you buy. Maybe choose your own adventure track from the mix?

We’ll know for sure the day after the pre-order deadline when all the stories, titles, and creators will be revealed. In any case, they seem very proud of the upcoming books, even saying that they are “without a doubt the best collection of stories that we have ever participated in at BAD IDEA”. Bad Idea also seems to have added a few new stores. They will announce all returning and new stores for Bad Idea Two tomorrow.

Bleeding Cool also learned that all pre-orders are “first impression guaranteed, regardless of allocations.” Perhaps to try to avoid a repeat of the heavy allocations that occurred during their final release, Odinn’s Eye. Also of note, Bad Idea says “we have plans for you haters”. Something we understand involves New York Comic-Con. But what about Diamond Previews? : we are waiting to find out more.